Before January, Southeast residents Nina Anderson, 9, and her brother Kevin, 7, had little formal music training. They were not exposed to the Caribbean culture in the Washington metropolitan area, and they never visited the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago, the birthplace of the steelpan.

Yet both children confidently played the rhythm for the popular “Lion King” song, and other calypso music as if they were natural born West Indians. Both play for the East of the River Police Boys and Girls Steelband.